MI6 rejected proposal to kill Balkan leader, Diana inquest told

A former head of MI6 confirmed yesterday that a proposal to assassinate a senior Balkan politician was briefly considered within the Secret Intelligence Service during the early 1990s, but rejected.

Sir Richard Dearlove's admission came as he gave evidence at the inquests at the high court into the deaths of Princess Diana and her companion Dodi Fayed. He was denying claims by Dodi's father, Mohamed Al Fayed, that MI6 was involved in a conspiracy to murder the couple in the Paris crash in August 1997.

Dearlove said that Fayed's claim - repeated at the inquest on Monday - that the Duke of Edinburgh had masterminded the plot, which apparently involved precipitating the crash by shining lights in the eyes of the couple's chauffeur, Henri Paul, as the car entered the Alma Tunnel, was absurd. Fayed claims the duke and MI6 secretly run Britain.

Playing with his pen as he sat in the witness box, Dearlove said: "It is utterly ridiculous and the same is true of Prince Charles. I don't want to be flippant and I am tempted to think I am flattered but this is such an absurd allegation. It's completely off the map."

The Balkan admission came as Dearlove, who spent nearly 40 years in MI6 before his retirement three years ago, attempted to refute an allegation by the renegade former agent Richard Tomlinson that he had seen plans to murder Serbia's former president Slobodan Milosevic by forcing a car crash in a tunnel.

Dearlove said: "An officer working in one of the sections to do with the Balkans had suggested the possibility of assassinating another political personality who was involved in ethnic cleansing. The whole proposal was killed stone dead by the officer's line manager on the basis that his idea was out of touch with service practice, service ethos, and was not a proposal to which serious consideration would be given." He added that a claim by another former agent, David Shayler, that MI6 had plotted to kill Libya's Muammar Gadafy had been investigated by the Metropolitan police and was not true.

He was asked by Ian Burnett QC, counsel for the coroner: "During the whole of your time in SIS from 1966 to 2004 were you ever aware of the service assassinating anyone?" Dearlove replied: "No I was not."

He told Michael Mansfield QC, counsel for Fayed, that the agency took no interest in the princess's activities and did not hold a file on Fayed or employ Paul. "Frankly we did not take any interest in what she was doing. It's not a national security issue," he said.

At one point Dearlove turned to the coroner, Lord Scott Baker, saying that Mansfield's questioning about the training of agents had "absolutely no relevance" to the crash.

The coroner replied: "I have had very much in mind one of the purposes of the inquest is to confirm or allay public suspicion. That is what has caused me to allow a great deal more latitude than would normally be the case."